As integrated circuits become more complicated, it has become harder to translate an initial design into a silicon design. In principle it is possible for the silicon design to be drawn up by an individual. However in practice, this is difficult for an individual designer to do as there are a huge number of components on a chip. One small error in the design may result in a faulty integrated circuit. Additionally, this process is very slow and can significantly delay the amount of time taken to get the integrated circuit to the manufacturing stage.
Various computer programs have been proposed to assist in the design of an integrated circuit and more particularly in the testing of a design. These computer programs have typically been in the form of digital simulators which simulate a circuit under test. A hardware description language HDL has been designed to simulate and describe the behavior of digital circuitry. However, whilst programs such as HDL are useful in testing a design, they do not assist in the design of the integrated circuit itself.
Additionally, once the higher level design of an integrated circuit has been completed, it can be a laborious process to obtain the gate level design which provides the higher level function.